


Two Step

by synthwave



Category: Batman (Comics), Batman - All Media Types, Batman: Europa, DCU (Comics)
Genre: Blood Drinking, Blood Kink, Bloodplay, Consensual Violence, Enemies to Something, First Time, Hate Sex, M/M, Oral Sex, Painplay, Power Dynamics, Resolved Sexual Tension, Rough Oral Sex, Roughhousing, Unresolved Emotional Tension, old man bickering
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-06
Updated: 2016-12-06
Packaged: 2018-09-06 20:40:05
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,388
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8768500
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/synthwave/pseuds/synthwave
Summary: If you travel in a full circle it might be equally probable that everything changes, or that nothing does. (Set after the ending of Batman: Europa.)





	

**Author's Note:**

> I continue to play fast-and-loose with the characterization in the miniseries. I loved Europa’s concept, but in execution it’s basically a series of Lonely Planet blurbs as narrated by cranky know-it-all Batman, who occasionally pauses in the middle of administering a beatdown to provide this service. It’s not even close to a nuanced portrayal of either of them, but there are some interesting ideas in it and I keep coming back to it, so! This wasn’t written as an intentional sequel to my [previous Batman: Europa fic](http://archiveofourown.org/works/5595838), but as it turns out it can totally work that way if you want it to.
> 
> I treat Europa as a self contained continuity so I don’t turn into unflavored gelatin trying to keep track of how the greater mainstream DCU fits into all of this. Bruce and Joker’s injuries are also less severe than they were implied to be in the final issue, mostly for practical reasons (this would be another 8k words at least, and a different, less silly story).
> 
>  **Content Warning:** In addition to the stuff in the tags, there are brief, non-explicit references to emetophilia kink and breathing restriction. Bruce and J are comic book characters and not Safe or Responsible when it comes to pain stuff, so please remember to never hit anybody in the head, even for fun.

_Wherever you go, there you are._  
\--some over-quoted schmuck, ten thousand years ago

 

 

(Cut this memory apart. Tell yourself you’ll examine the most damning pieces later.)

Research has shown a positive correlation between adrenaline-producing activities and the likelihood of acting on feelings of attraction. You could have confirmed that long ago, but if you harbored any doubts after years of tempering yourself, you slaughtered them last night. With blood on your hands, you committed the unspeakable not long after you put the Joker’s arm back into its socket.

He had to lay down on the sidewalk of Via Caio Cestio, clenching his teeth, so you could brace your boot heel against his side and pull his arm up and out. When it slid into place, he was far gone enough to scream.

“Shut up,” you said. You were within sight of apartment blocks with lit windows, and could hear music carrying faintly from a car radio in one of the fenced-in driveways nearby. At least the rain spiraling around the streetlamps lowered your risk of encountering locals. A taxi slowed next to you earlier, but sped away when you looked at it.

Joker curled in on himself in a fit of laughter. “Do it again! Yank it out and do it again.”

You hauled him to his feet, hoping your fascination with his pain wasn't as naked as it felt. “Walk.” 

(For now, just the facts.)

Side by side, the two of you walked. Joker stopped to look at anything that caught his eye: layers of graffiti on the concrete walls, boarded-up windows, a torn sandal. He might have been testing your sense of urgency. 

After a full three minutes of silence, he said, "I'm not finished with you yet. You’re supposed to follow through when you swing.”

“That wasn’t the time or the place.”

“You say that now, but you were pretty frisky back there when your fever broke.” He halted, narrowing his eyes. “Wait. Was that a critique of my timing?”

You collected him and moved him along. “If you want me to take you back to the Colosseum, I’m sure the police can accommodate you.”

“Think so? They might have their hands full with Bane.”

That was aimed to wound; you let it put you on the defensive. “I left him secured. They shouldn’t have problems taking him into custody.”

“Does he know that?” He elbowed your ribs. “What’re you planning to do about it, anyway?”

“Bane?” You wished you had a better answer. “Get away.”

Joker pulled an appalled face. “You mean _run_? You rattled his tank fair and square! Aside from the part where we tricked him, but he started it.”

 _We’re not running from Bane_ , you could have said. And you could have waited there, couldn’t you, to turn Joker over to the _carabinieri_. He might have been off your hands and out of Gotham for at least a month, maybe longer--

\--during which he would have wreaked all kinds of havoc on a system unprepared for him, a culture he’d want to claw apart, and a city that usually sleeps at night. But you didn’t want to lay that out for him; you could only imagine the ammunition he’d get out of you being forced to keep him ahead of the law. “Until I know what his actual motivations were, I want distance.”

Joker shrugged. “What he told us made perfect sense to me.”

“He was raving.” Which, you knew, wouldn't preclude it making sense to Joker. “Unless you can think of a good reason for him to have taken a specific interest in our--” _Relationship._ “--mutual antipathy, we don’t know the full story yet.”

“You’re anti-pathetic. Some detective you are.” He looped one arm around yours and shoved the other hand in his pocket, leaning on you. He was more solid than he looked. “It was nice of him to play matchmaker, even if I hope he wakes up with twenty pounds of travertine shredding its way through his lower intestine.”

You chose not to validate that line of thought with a response, so you were obviously of sound mind and judgment. 

(Just the facts.)

Rome is not a city suited to your tactics. Its architecture is low and sprawling compared to Gotham’s, and its sky looms enormous with nothing to break it. But it would have been easy to adapt, if not for him. Bruce Wayne could have hailed a cab and disappeared into a hotel for the night, but you were stuck on the streets thanks to the monster at your side.

You so rarely find yourself in situations where removing your mask would simplify your life.

A car passed, water hissing under its tires, and Joker’s head moved with it, tracking. That chilled you. Injured and thwarted as he was, he’d likely demoted the rest of humanity from playthings to prey for the foreseeable future.

You pulled him into the deeper shadows of a storefront, glass dust crunching under your boots, to stand him and the road. “If Bane does get loose, I want us in position to lead him out of the city. We’re going back to the jet.”

“I’m fine. I’m at three-hundred percent, never better.” Joker eased his back against the brick wall and rested there. “And if he doesn’t follow us?”

“We’ll work from there.”

His eyes shone. “You don’t have a plan, do you? You. No plan.” He giggled, lifting the edge of your cape. “You’re _winging_ it.”

“Hilarious.”

“You didn’t think this far ahead! You really thought we were going to die, didn’t you? You thought we were off to throw ourselves on the mercy of the upstairs court.”

“One of us, maybe.”

“You’re not getting away from me that easily. And what makes you think you’re on the guest list, huh? Let’s make a deal--I’ll distract Saint Peter, and you rush the pearly gates. But you have to promise to put in a good word for me with your folks.”

You just looked at him.

He smiled. “Do you think they’ll forgive us for eloping? Men die for me every day, Bats, but you’re the only one I’d let take me down with him.”

You dug your fingers into his injured shoulder and dragged him onward.

 

* * *

 

You didn’t allow yourself to start feeling what Bane had put you through until you'd parked the jet in the underground hangar near Fiumicino. When the engine powered down, something went out of you, too. 

Consequences usually catch up to you in private.

“We could skip town,” Joker said, as you ushered him out of the co-pilot’s chair to seal off the cockpit. “Since you’re so worried about Bane.”

“I’m not.” You pretended not to notice how he kept probing at your motives. “If he manages to find our exact location, it’s safe to assume he has a tracker on us that I haven’t found yet.”

“So what, we just wait here to see if he knocks on the door and offers us cannoli?”

“Provided he doesn’t find _my_ tracker, we should have plenty of warning.”

The cockpit doors shut, halving the light. Joker stood in the middle of the cabin, rubbing his shoulder. “You’re compromising your hidey-hole, if he does find us.”

“It’s already compromised.”

“Oh.” Dull surprise. You didn’t know what to make of his expression: half-smiling, his brow furrowed. “Are you going to handcuff me, then? I like to end things on a high note.”

The correct procedure would have been to lock him in the holding cell. You should have done it from the beginning, but you’d relented before you even left Berlin, when he insisted he wouldn’t be your prisoner and asked if you expected him to keep his hands behind his back.

_Truce, old friend?_

“No.” You pointed to the narrow bed under the bulkhead. “Get cleaned up, sit there.”

(You can claim now that it was a mistake, as though your capacity for forethought suddenly, conveniently fled you.)

You pulled down the med kit from the overhead storage, pain darting through your hands when its weight settled on them. As you turned to set it on your workstation, you saw that Joker had removed his jacket and was unbuttoning his shirt.

“You don’t need to undress,” you said. 

He pulled his left arm free, wincing as his shoulder rotated, and gave you a sideways look. “And miss a chance to strip for you? Just remember, this is Italy. I don’t have change for large bills.”

Most of the cuts were on his lower arms, where he’d covered his face to shield himself from Bane’s initial attacks. Just above his collarbone, a shallow wound trickled dark lines of blood on his ghastly skin. There wasn’t any reason for him not to undress, you reasoned. It would make things easier.

(It shouldn’t have bothered you enough to need justification.)

He looked like a corpse, as usual. His bangs hung limp around his face, damp from the rain. His hands were dirty, the nailbeds caked in blood--yours or his, it didn’t matter. And you thought to yourself, as your eyes lingered on the curve of his waist and the hollow of his throat, that charisma is a hell of a thing.

Joker tossed his jacket and shirt into a pile at the foot of the bed. He bent over and shook his hair out, scratching at his scalp. “By the way, Bats.”

“What?”

“I wish you’d done it.”

You turned your back, opened the kit, and started taking inventory of what you’d need. “I don’t.”

Whenever your battle comes this close to being fatal, guilt hangs over your shoulder like a scavenger. Having him near you in the aftermath made it worse. You’re used to processing it alone, and yet there he was, sharing your space and reminding you how easily you could have been burying him instead of listening to him breathe.

“You lie like a rug,” Joker said.

“Wash those cuts.” You kept your head down. One thing at a time. It was getting harder to concentrate, now that you were standing in one place with a simple task in front of you. Your thought process reset itself over and over; you had to remind yourself not to keep looking for the vial of antiseptic spray already in your hand.

He shuffled around at your back. “We could’ve been done, you know.”

You wanted to scream at him: _What the hell is wrong with you. You’re the one who decided this ends in death. You’re the one who won’t stop until I kill you._

Instead, you said, “You kept telling me you didn’t want to die. So which is it?”

“Circumstances, my dear. Circumstances.” He moved closer. Within range to pour acid in your wounds, you supposed. “I never would have gambled my life on you admitting we need each other, let’s put it that way.”

“I need you like I need a hole in my head.” It was a juvenile thing to say, leaving him a wide berth for comebacks.

“That might be the most romantic thing I’ve ever heard.” He reached across your arm and tapped the side of the kit. “I don’t suppose you’ve got a trepan in there.”

You shrugged him off, pointing toward the bathroom. 

He went, shutting the door behind him. You heard the sink running, and the faint sound of water splashing. After a few minutes alone, you could think past the background noise.

 _You could have overpowered him,_ the thing on your shoulder whispered. _You wouldn’t have had to die with him. You would have survived._ And you know what kind of monster feeds on its victim’s blood before it kills.

 

* * *

 

Joker came back cleaner, the skin around his wounds soft and bloodless. He sat on the edge of the bed, his long toes curling and uncurling against the island of surrounding carpet.

You brought the kit over and knelt at his feet. He smiled, arching his brows, and rested his hands on your shoulders. He smelled like blood and sweat, rain-drenched dust and your soap. You knew you were in danger when you weren’t repulsed.

(There were other, better ways you could have done this. You didn’t.)

He watched you disinfect the cuts and abrasions on his arms, hissing when you applied coats of antiseptic polymer. The wound below his throat was still bleeding, tendrils of red feathering out on his wet skin. You hesitated to touch it.

“I can do it, if you’re shy,” he said.

“You’re not getting access to chemicals in here.”

“Worrywart.” He rubbed his knuckles against your cheek. “How’s your hand?”

You'd all but forgotten about it yourself. Everything hurt, so nothing stood out. “Not as broken as I thought.”

“Oh good, that makes three of us. I guess we’ll be back at each others' throats in record time. Unless you’re having second thoughts about letting me live now that we’re cured, that is, in which case I’m at your disposal. Especially this close to the water.” 

You gripped him by the shoulder, hard enough to kill his bitter laughter. “Listen to me. I made a choice. Do you think I’d bring you back here--do you think I’d be _sitting_ here--if I planned to do it anyway?”

The corner of his mouth twisted. “I’m hardly upset that you’d _do_ it, but what was that weak excuse? When you finally do snap, your breaking point had better not be somebody else’s atrocity.”

“If this is about Nina, don’t.”

“Oh, that was rich! Bane played us like a zeusaphone, and she was the tune he had you dancing to. You do remember who killed her now, right? I hope the virus didn’t simmer it out of you, but you were just a touch incoherent there at the end.”

You remembered, of course, but Colossus had divided you from your higher reasoning. The certainty that Joker would betray you grew stronger every time you tried to sleep, parables about scorpions creeping into your fevered mind. _It’s his nature_. And then you saw your death not in the virus or its creator, but in needing to reach for your worst enemy's hand. You expected to hear him laughing as he let you fall.

_Kill him, Bane_

In the end, he never did.

Joker folded his hands, elbows resting on his knees. “If it helps, she must’ve been on a steady diet of carbon monoxide and blood for at least three minutes before we got there. What did you want me to do for her, anyway--applaud? Not even you could've saved her.”

“Bane killed her.” You let him go. “Or his creation. I know. It’s on his hands.”

“And you only put _him_ down for a nap, but not before he talked you into believing _il Colosseo_ would make us a swell tomb. I should’ve brought eye drops, so I could fake a few tears for the little edelweiss and keep you on target. As for our final resting place, I was actually thinking about under the asylum, between the charnel pits. Or do you have a family plot in mind?”

Something like an apology died in your throat. He wouldn’t want it, and you didn’t want to give him the satisfaction. It would be too dangerous to cede ground, to credit him just for not having actively participated in a murder.

“I don’t want to kill you,” you said.

He draped his arm over your shoulder again, patting the back of your neck. “That’s the biggest load of crap I’ve ever heard, but I think you believe it.”

(You were very tired, as though that excuses anything at all.)

You lowered your eyes, leaning in to wipe the blood from his cut with a square of gauze. Watching his skeletal chest rise and fall. His arms were covered in gooseflesh, his nipples erect in the cool air. It made him look vulnerable. You knew better.

“Want to hear something funny,” he said.

“No.”

You couldn’t talk yourself out of wanting to say something to him, to make an overture of peace he’d probably recoil from. The part of your brain that warns you of intimate threats was on high alert. You bent your head closer to narrow your attention. White skin, red blood. 

You remembered his fingers in your mouth, the too-sweet sting that made you think of antifreeze. Before he made the choice you couldn’t make, you’d considered how to do it. You’d imagined, however briefly, that you might find yourself licking the blood from his skin.

It welled up fresh in the cut again and again, even after you pulled the gauze away soaked. 

“It’s a good one,” he said.

“I don’t care.”

The desire to touch him had been closing in on you

(for years)

and just then it hit you fully, like a hammer to the back of your aching head. For the third time in as many days, you went so far as to imagine what it would be like to hold him.

“You look like you might still be sick.” Joker pressed the back of his hand to your forehead. Your mask felt oppressively tight. Under the antiseptic, you could still smell his skin. You hated yourself more than ever.

You could have finished cleaning the cut and sealing it, but you didn’t. You set the gauze aside and watched it bleed, unable to close yourself off. And of course, while you were open, he read you.

“Want to do me for real this time?” He was close, his breath warm against your cheek. “Nobody’ll notice a few more bruises.” 

You did want to. You were hungry for him, and you couldn’t even claim that the virus had done this to you. “Keep your repulsive ideas to yourself,” you said.

“I know, it’s cruel to tempt you.” He smiled. “So, gonna kiss it better?”

(You’d like to think there might have been a point of no return, after which you couldn’t have done anything to stop it.)

“Go to hell.” You stood, and took the med kit with you into the bathroom to tend your own wounds. Joker lay back on the bed, laughing at you.

 

* * *

 

The thermostat read 60 °F, but you shivered as you stripped off your armor. At least it was a clean chill. When you peeled your mask away in front of the mirror, you had to remind yourself that you were looking at your own face: red-rimmed eyes, hollow cheeks, shadowed jaw. Deepening lines around the mouth.

You washed your hands until the water ran clean in the basin. The rope burn on your right palm was hideous, the skin macerated and peeling. You wanted a shower, but not enough to take one--it was all you could do to make yourself administer first aid. By the time you were finished, even the light repetitive motion of cleaning and treating your wounds had left a tremor in your dominant hand.

“Lights,” you said, as you left the bathroom. The cabin dimmed. You should have found clothes to change into before coming out. But you didn’t bother.

Joker had burrowed under the blankets in your absence. “Should make ‘em do the thing where they clap on and off,” he mumbled.

“I’ll keep it in mind.” Your legs caught up to the lack of immediate danger, growing clumsy and stiff as you made your way around the cabin to do a security check. “Try to sleep.”

(You were still pretending nothing was going to change.)

He turned over, stretching ghostlike fingers toward you. “Bats, come to bed.”

“I’m sleeping in the cockpit,” you said, offering him an out. If he took it, you would be fine. It wouldn’t be the first time you’d fallen asleep upright after cutting things too close with him, knowing what you’d do if you lay in bed.

(You knew he wouldn’t take it.)

“Ever the gentleman.” He beckoned to you. “C’mere already.”

You reached back.

(You made a choice.)

Shameful, how easy it was to take his hand and lay down next to him. All your cuts and bruises were sinking in now, protesting every time you moved. You didn’t care. “Leave room for the Holy Spirit,” he cackled, as you arranged yourselves in a space barely wide enough for two. Your feet brushed against his bare legs; you didn’t care.

He was very close, closer than he’d ever been without trying to kill you, and you didn’t care about that, either.

You felt him settle in beside you. He touched your face--your brow, your cheeks, your mouth--with your hands loose on his wrists, guiding him instead of stopping him. 

(You knew this human weakness would be unthinkable in hindsight.) 

“You’re still bleeding,” he said.

“I know.” 

“I can smell it on you.”

Joker’s violent urges, like his patience and his focus, ebb and flow. By the acid in his voice, you knew the tide had just rolled out.

You aren’t sure which of you moved first. (It was you.) Which of you struck first. (It was him.) There was a struggle. He went for your throat but you pinned him to the bed with your body weight, the only real advantage you have in a scrap with him. It was an excuse to get you on top of him, and you knew it. He was play-fighting. You played along.

There was a nervous edge in his giggling. “You’re heavy.” 

“Hold still and calm down.”

Your own ragged breathing betrayed you. _You're supposed to want him to hold still, you're supposed to want him to calm down--_

“I didn’t say I didn’t like it.” He tapped his fingers against your chest. Slow at first, then picking up speed. “I can feel your heart beating.” He shifted under you, closer. “I can feel all sorts of interesting things in this position, actually.”

You should have found him revolting. Your senses were still battle-sharp and the rush hadn’t left you yet; maybe it was a sublimation of the killing desire. You wanted to shatter him, to render him helpless.

He wrapped his thin legs around you. You needed the evidence that he was alive--to feel that immediate contact with his skin, his hips rocking against yours. You moved with him. He was so much warmer than you’d expected.

You’d told yourself over and over that it would always be better in your head. Reality had betrayed you again.

“You’re disgusting,” you said, meaning both of you. “You’re filth.”

Joker bared his teeth. “And you just love to get your hands dirty, don’t you?”

You kissed him.

(You made a choice.)

Not his lips, but the soft skin beneath his jaw. Then his throat. Then lower, until you felt the shape of his wound under your tongue and his blood was in your mouth. 

He hissed inward, arching against you, clawing your back. Breathless, he laughed in your ear. “Oh, you poor thing. ‘I’ll try not to throw up,' he says. Sure, and then--”

You bit down. This time, you let him scream. 

Circumstantial evidence might suggest a crime of passion. But if you allow yourself an impartial analysis, you can prove it was premeditated.

 

* * *

 

Now.

The cabin brightens gradually on a timer you forgot to reset, the light level suggesting pre-dawn. The LED clock across from the bed reads 09:31 CET, but your brain is still on Gotham time, so knock off six hours. This is your time to be out on the streets.

You’re disoriented and half-awake and not alone. 

You're starting to wonder when to wake Joker and how when he curls up against your side. “Morning, sunshine.”

“Nnh,” is all the response you can manage.

You think he might have fallen asleep again, and then: “I thought bats were active at dawn.”

“It’s too late.” 

“Ain’t that the truth.” His hair is stuck to his forehead and there’s dried blood on his throat and all the marks you left on his skin look black in the dim light. He’d deny it, but that’s always been a good color on him.

A familiar drum starts beating inside your head: _You fought, that’s all. It was a fight, and you hurt him, and_

You shut it down, tired of yourself. “How do you feel?”

He stretches and looks up at you, and you struggle with an unreasonable rush of tenderness toward him. It's just chemicals. Keep it together. You have no idea what to expect from him or how he’ll react to this in the long term, even if he seems stable now.

“Fantastic,” he says. “Like I got hit by a truck. You?”

You want to pull him back into your arms and rest for a while longer. You’ve never fucked up this badly before, and yet you're just dying to compound your mistake for another three to five hours. “I was hoping my conscience would kick in.”

He grins. “I ate it.”

“That’s what I’m afraid of.”

Joker scoots up to get a better look at you, resting his chin on his hand. There’s no point in pretending he doesn’t know your face already, so you let him. “It’s not as bad as I thought it’d be,” he says, touching the tip of your nose.

“I take it the harsh light of morning does me no favors.” 

He snorts. “Wise ass.” His fingers press against your cheekbones. “You’ve got beautiful eyes, you know that?” Harder, below the sockets. “Serve you right if I ripped ‘em out.”

His wrist is against your lips, where you can feel his veins stand out under the skin. “Try to restrain yourself.”

“Don’t worry.” He kisses your brow. “I know you still need them.”

You make yourself sit up, ignoring his muffled protests when you untangle yourself from him. Your muscles are screaming, so you get out of bed and stretch, trying to assess the damage. Your head hurts, and you’re nauseous.

Ingesting enough blood will do that to you.

Joker moves into the space you left, laying on his stomach. “Stop me if you’ve heard this one,” he says, watching you. “What’s a word that starts with ‘f’ and ends with ‘c’ and ‘k’?”

“Firetruck.”

“A dirty word.”

Something in your hand pops when you flex it, bursting with pain and dulling to a throb. “A firetruck driving through a mud puddle.”

He tosses a pillow at you. “I said stop me, dammit. I hate you.”

You rub your temples. “It’s mutual.” 

The silence that follows is almost comfortable. Finally, he says, “I expected the consequences to be more...apocalyptic, somehow. What about you?”

“I didn’t have any expectations,” you lie.

“So you never planned for this either, huh?”

You hope the look you give him says everything. “If your next move is to engineer an apocalypse, I appreciate the warning.”

“I didn’t say that. I’m just flabbergasted by how deep the denial runs with you. Either you never even considered the obvious, or you won’t admit to thinking about it.”

You shrug. “I can’t win.”

“That’s what I’ve been saying.” He picks at his long nails. “Well, did you get it out of your system?”

You expected him to strike out some, to hunt for sore spots. He might retreat now, pretending that he gave you nothing, revealed nothing. “I didn’t have anything to get out.”

“Supercalifragilistic-Batsy’s-counterphobic,” he says, sing-song. “Every time he wants something, you know he really hates it.”

Maybe he somehow tracked down the therapist you saw when you were fourteen. You reject the diagnosis, then and now; if a word can cut away so much of you in a single blow, you refuse to let it fall into enemy hands. “Shallow reading.” You toss the pillow back to him. “You can do better.”

He pulls it under him, hugging it to his chest. “All right, fine. Tell me how it feels to kill me.”

“We’re not having this conversation again.”

“Not that.” He waves an impatient hand. “You killed me, remember?”

His eyes are steady, free of the distant look he gets when your realities don’t intersect. “Talk sense,” you say.

“You don’t remember how you held me down and strangled me? I put up a fight, but you had the upper hand. Then you finished me off!” That cracks him up, his shoulders convulsing.

“It worries me,” you say slowly, “that you don’t see a difference between that and what actually happened.”

“You’re the one committing diet murder.” Your expression must be wretched, because he smiles at you with terrible warmth. “Come on, there isn’t a difference. There’s never been a difference.”

Remind yourself that you knew he would do this. It’s his only defense. Instinct and experience tell you he’s trying to express something beyond his limited emotional range, though, and that makes you want to pick at it. Despite your mental exhaustion--or maybe because of it--you can see the shape of a counterargument.

“If I’ve already killed you,” you say, “then that’s it. I’ll never need to actually do it.”

He narrows his eyes at you through his ragged bangs. _This is amateur-class absurdity,_ that look says. _Step it up._ “Sorry, no returns or substitutions. Real killing ends everything.”

His logic is as slippery as ever. If you wanted to go around in circles, you’d remind him that he raised the comparison in the first place. “If I've killed you once, and I decide it precludes me doing it again, that's also an ending. Just not the one you expected.”

Joker’s eyes widen just a little as he chews his lip. You aren’t sure how to read his expression. You try to never project anything onto him, so you don’t interpret it as a flicker of hope.

“Are we having a Socratic debate?” he asks. “If so, I insist on being Aristophanes. You can be Plato, the insufferable prick.”

You don’t quite smile. “What do you have against Plato?”

“He’s got a punchable face.”

That explains a lot about the incident at the museum last year. “My point is--” You hunt for your point. “I don’t deal in foregone conclusions, and you’re damned fatalistic for someone who claims the philosophy you do.”

“I claim jack all, but thanks for lowering yourself to my level. It’s a riot.” Joker steeples his fingers and looks at you through them, his lips curving upward. You feel the tension sharpen. “Now, I asked you before, and I’ll ask you again: do you want to hear something funny?”

“All right,” you say.

(You know better.)

“You said you didn’t know what Bane wanted, but I think he wanted to hang your guts out to dry. Follow me? He forces you to skip through the tulips with a low-belly viper like yours truly, and as the virus gnaws your brain to slurry and you become _alarmingly_ suggestible, your natural tendency to blame me for everything turns pathological. Bane feeds that, and--here’s the good part--you turn on _me_ at the last minute. You die a backstabbing murderer, and I die pleading with you to see reason!” A laughing fit takes him, and he buries his face in the pillow.

Like most things he finds funny, you’d rather not have heard it. It would explain--

“You’re saying we were meant to switch roles,” you say. “And that the virus triggered that.”

It’s a cold thought, one you don’t want to finish. If the virus simply pushed you in opposite directions, it would explain why he saved you, why he didn’t betray you, and why he didn’t grow more erratic like you did. You need to know for sure. You don’t want to.

Joker lifts his head. His smile is poisonous. “What’s that look for? Did I put a bee in your bonnet? The only thing the virus gave me was a fever and an expiration date. If you been paying attention, you’d have figured that out. That’s what’s funny, genius. Bane had your number all along, and all he had to do was give you a little shove to get you thinking about offing me.”

That was a deliberate low hit, and your vision narrows to a dark hole. “Do you think you could try voicing your thoughts in a linear format,” you say, forcing an even tone. “Just once.”

He makes a disgusted noise. “Actually, I don’t think it did all that much to you, either. You’re just stubborn. I know I’m a very bad man, and I’ve tried to do very bad things to you lots, but it’s like I said: circumstances. Games don’t need rules, but they do need boundaries. Or else it’s just reality, and who wants that? We’re outside our magic circle right now.”

The term is familiar, but it takes you a moment to follow. “Are you really referencing Huizinga’s game theory.”

“Cork it, this is my turf.” He traces a circle on the flat of his palm. “Different games, different boundaries. Sure, you could expand the boundaries to the whole wide world, but then it’s hard to tell where one game ends and another begins. Like fingers in a blender.”

You grimace. “I thought a truce meant we were putting the game on hold.”

“Why, because the virus was super-serious and we were going to die? Silly of you. We’re just playing something different for a while, that’s all. What’s the point if we’re not having fun?”

In that context, his willingness to cast aside animosity--to treat this as some kind of twisted vacation--almost makes sense. “How long do you expect us to play this, then?”

“We could keep going ‘til we get bored of it.” He frowns. “I said we didn’t have to stop just because we got cured, but I know your sacred duty demands status quo.”

The chill is back, reminding you of the sweat on your skin and how unclean you are. You resist the urge to rub your arms. “So we’re clear on this--just so I know where we stand--under normal circumstances, you would have let me die.”

Joker rolls his eyes. “Will you stop putting words in my mouth? I do that just fine on my own. You can’t go first, because I won’t let anyone else do me in. Is it really that hard to get your brain around?”

“It’s sick.” And it’s no reassurance, because you know he means it.

“You knew what I was when we started.”

“I don’t need a reminder this early.”

“It’s a little early for me too, if I’m being honest. Do you want to get coffee or something?”

He rolls onto his side and faces the wall, so you’re not sure what the signal-to-noise ratio of that was. You let the silence sit for as long as you can stand it, the cold seeping under your skin.

“I made that cut worse,” you say.

“You did, you sadist.” Joker shakes a finger at you over his shoulder. “Don’t mess with it. I want it to scar.”

(Whatever’s wrong with you goes to the bone, because you want it to scar, too.)

As much as you hate to admit it, his insight is helping fill holes in the past week that you don’t have answers for. “Why Europe, then? Bane could have changed the rules and driven his point home in Gotham just as easily.”

“For the same reason your little death-loophole thought experiment doesn’t work.” He pulls the blankets up around his neck. “Bane may not know it, but he’s just a throwaway line in the colossal gag the universe has going at our expense. You don’t get it either, or you wouldn’t have to ask.”

“I can’t be in on the joke if you don’t tell it to me.”

“How about I tell you the punchline?”

It feels like a trap. “Go ahead.” 

“It’s us.”

“Fine.” You’re too chilled to stand there anymore, and it only makes you want to go back to sleep. You’ll prepare for the eventual fallout--whatever it turns out to be--when you’re functioning at something close to full capacity. “I’m going to take a shower.”

“It’s been how many years? And you still don’t get it,” he calls after you, before you close the bathroom door. “It’s right in front of your face.”

 

* * *

 

Put it aside.

Your gear is still where you left it, so you arrange it into a neater pile and check the status of the tracker on Bane. He’s in custody at Salvator Mundi, and Interpol is involved. That’s enough to get you through the morning, unless things go bad all at once. You drop a message to your agency contacts to tell them you’re still in Italy--but you don’t mention Rome, or that you aren’t alone. Wait and see.

You should call Alfred. You swallow your painkillers dry and think about how horrified he’d be about you doing that. About everything. 

You cup hot water in your throbbing hands and try to wash your face without looking in the mirror. 

At the bottom of your priority list is whatever happened last night. You’re not even sure what to call it. You choked him, you hit him, and he came--not for the first time, but there’s a clear line between an unspoken understanding mid-battle, and--

You’re tired of yourself again. Just call it sex. It was sex.

Think of it in terms of what you’ve learned.

(Confirmation--as you’d suspected--that intense, focused pain can give him sustained non-ejaculatory orgasms if he’s receptive. There’s a bruise forming across his cheekbone you can’t make yourself feel guilty about. That was the real difference, incidental genital contact aside; you didn’t have to pretend you didn’t notice. You could dig into what he wanted to feel and push until it drove him mindless.)

Instead of dwelling on it.

(You put a stop to it before you reached climax, because when he was spent all the strength went out of his limbs and exhaustion caught up to him. You held him while he talked, stream-of-consciousness rambling until he fell asleep. _One of us should stay awake,_ you thought. _One of us should--_ )

There’s a knock on the door, to the rhythm of shave-and-a-haircut.

“What,” you say.

It opens a crack. “I didn’t hear the shower running,” Joker says, “and I started thinking, ‘Is he dead? Mourning his innocence? Engaging in hand-to-gland combat?’”

“None of your business.” But you move forward, giving him room to come in.

He slips through the door and under your arm, where he stands beside you, examining himself and picking flakes of blood off his skin. When you look in the mirror, your reflection is almost recognizable. Terrible, that he should amplify your signal.

He's mostly corded muscle and jutting bone, mass and emaciation in proportions that should be impossible to maintain. So much of him is incompatible with human life. You know something of what he feels like now, and it isn't the first time you've seen him in the nude, but in direct light he's objectively monstrous. You don't want to take your eyes off him.

The cut on his throat is swelling at the edges, surrounded by a wider, uneven circle of broken skin and burst blood vessels. You did that. It's sickening, but it stirs a thrill in you. You marked him, and he wants to keep it. He could tell anyone what it means, but you don't think he will. He's always liked having secrets with you.

He catches you looking. “You do good work, chum.” The bruises on his throat map to your fingerprints; he gives one of them a light tap. “Have I ever told you that?”

“You’ve mentioned it.”

“Are you pissed at me?”

You aren’t, even if you have reason to be. “Usually.”

Joker slides his arms around your waist, resting a hand on your hip. Look at that in the mirror, if you can. “I think you might be laboring under the impression that I’m playing mind games with you.”

“You are.” You don’t think he has any other setting. You’re not sure you do, either.

“Well, for the record, I’m not trying to screw you up. I think you’ve got that covered all by yourself.” His voice dips to a pitch that goes directly to the base of your spine. “I want to see how far you’ll go. This might be the first time I’ve _really_ seen you lose it.”

 _Likewise,_ you think, but you know it's not the same for him. You let him score the point. “I’ll give Bane your thanks.”

“You’re a prince, but I’ll deliver them personally.”

“There’s still something about that I--”

“Shh-shhh.” He leans in and bites your earlobe. Too gentle to hurt, hard enough to feel good. “Forget him. Later. Anyway, what I’m saying is, uncharted waters. Right? May as well toss your map overboard, because it’s no good to you. Except the ‘here there be monsters’ part, but you knew that already.”

You’re weak. You have to remind yourself that it’s all new, and that you haven’t been open to this kind of casual intimacy all along. His edges aren’t any less sharp than they were before, but raw as you are, you’re still ready to throw yourself on them.

Whatever measure of faith you had in yourself to feel regret was misplaced.

You make yourself look directly at him, instead of at his reflection. “Did you like it?” you ask. Whatever he believes about your motivations, you can live with it if you hear him say it.

“You big lug.” He touches your cheek, draws you down until your foreheads are touching and you’re fully inside each other’s space. Mind to mind, as staggering as a kiss. “It was good. You were good to me.”

“I hurt you.” One last gasp of your moral compass, as though you really believe that pleasuring him and hurting him are mutually exclusive.

“You sure did.” His mouth splits into an impudent grin. “Wanna do it again?”

God, you’re so weak.

 

* * *

 

He bites when he kisses. Last night he was playing, but he’s aggressive now, and it’s good to have something familiar to ground yourself in. It’s easy to throw him down onto the bed, force his hands above him, wrestle with him while he snaps at your throat like a wild animal and tries to kick your legs out from under you. You strike him across the face, open-hand, hard enough to turn his head.

The upshift in his arousal is instant, and he relaxes, his body language open and permissive. “Christ.” He’s breathing heavily, eyes dark and fixed on you. “Can you at least admit you get a kick out of that now?”

You’re still ashamed. “Because you do.” 

“Sweet boy.” 

The affection in his voice does you in. When you kiss him again he doesn’t bite; his lips and tongue are soft against yours. You let go of his wrists so you can hold each other. It’s impossible to be close enough to him. This is going to be the death of you.

“Bats,” he murmurs, in the midst of your frenzied touching. “Think you can be a little rough with me?”

You’ve heard stories about things he’s had other people do to him. “Nothing life-threatening.”

He throws his head back and laughs. “If that’s where you draw the line, we’re going to have _fun_.”

When you stop to catch your breath he pushes you away, so you stand up and back to give him space. You think he might be overstimulated, but then he slides off the edge of the bed and to his knees on the floor. He pulls you close again, pressing a kiss to the joining of your hip and thigh.

You breathe. “Joker.”

He does it again, slow and reverent, lower. “No?”

You weren’t sure how far to take this, but you can’t think of a good reason why you shouldn’t let him give you head that you haven’t already passed at breakneck speed. You comb your fingers through his hair--gently at first--and then tighten your grip. “Is this what you meant by rough?” 

He relaxes into it, biting his lower lip. “Yeah." The way he says that goes straight between your legs; he sees your cock twitching in his face and grins. "In ancient Rome this kind of thing was considered degrading. How squeamish are you?”

You understand what he’s asking for. “Do you consider it degrading?”

“In a good way.” He looks serene, his eyes half-lidded, as he runs his fingernails feather-light over your inner thighs. “I like it. There’s only three, maybe four surefire ways of shutting me up, so think of this as expanding your repertoire.” 

“God damn it.”

“I saw a smile.” He spits into his palm. “Are you good with standing? Helps to have something behind my head.”

“Yes.” You’re thinking of the logistics. You’re really thinking it through as though it's going to happen. Kneeling there gives him more control than he’d have if you straddled him on the bed, but he’ll still be almost completely in your power. You can brace yourself against the mattress if you need to. You’re going to do this. It’s terrifying, how easy it is to let this go forward. “If you want me to stop--” 

“I won’t.” He cups his hand around your cock, holding you loosely in his palm. You're patient, you tell yourself. You have self-control. “I know what I’m about. I think you do, too.”

He’s right. “I’ll tell you when you can use your mouth.”

Something in his eyes hardens and sparks. “Yes, dear.”

He touched you a little last night, but not like this. At first he teases as he spreads the wetness over your skin and plays with you, flicking his thumb in gentle circles over your frenulum. When he pushes harder it’s deeply satisfying, like massaging an ache. It takes you a while to get fully hard, so he works you up to it, slow and thorough. You’re not sure what you were expecting from him, but it wasn’t this. It’s intense in a way you usually only feel when you haven’t come for a long time and you’ve been edging yourself to progressively horrific fantasies. 

It makes sense. Those fantasies are mostly about him.

Drops of pre-come bead at the tip of your cock and you grab his wrist because it feels like you’re already hovering at the point of inevitability. He leans in and kisses the base of it, looking up into your eyes, giving you time to stop him. You let him get away with it for a few seconds before you pull his head back and slap him.

Joker laughs, deep and low. “That’s more like it.”

“If you want something, ask.” Under normal circumstances, you reserve this tone for threats.

“Sherlock Holmes can’t solve the mystery, huh?”

You let go of his hand and stroke his swollen lips with your thumb, pushing past his teeth and into his mouth. He sucks on it, eager. You’re going to die. “I want to hear you ask for it.”

The desperate sound he makes when you take your hand away is _so_ gratifying. You bend down so he has to look at you.

“I didn’t catch that."

He snarls. “Make me choke on it.”

Thank god he’s not touching you right now. You offer him two fingers. “Prove I can trust you.”

It’s an old look he gives you, a mixture of hatred and worship. You hold that, drinking it in, as he takes your fingers into his mouth and does as he’s told.

This alone is almost more than you can bear, slick wet heat and his mouth pulling hard at you. You could let him do it for hours. When you reach to the back of his throat, he retches; you expected him to have stronger control over that reflex, and that he doesn’t strikes you as disarmingly erotic. You pull out so he can breathe and he braces himself against your thigh, wiping involuntary tears from the corners of his eyes.

“I’m bigger than that,” you warn him.

“Oh, shut up.” His voice is thick and unsteady. He pats your leg. “Just don’t get too exuberant. Unless that’s your thing? You know how I love surprises.”

It might be your thing, which you could have gone your entire life not knowing. The thought is both attractive and repulsive, a reaction you’re on intimate terms with. “I’ll go slow until I see what you can take. Open your mouth.”

He obeys and you slip your fingers in again, thrusting this time. He adapts, and when you twist his hair close to the scalp so you can move his head he relaxes into it, letting you control the pace. His eyes are closed and his cheeks and throat are flushed and you want to see his mouth around your cock more than anything. 

“Give me your hand,” you say.

He offers his injured arm and makes a high, pained noise when you pin his wrist against the mattress. You take your fingers away to let him talk. “Too much?”

“No.” He breathes deep, shaking his head. “No, keep going, that’s good.”

You take him at his word, tipping his head back and moving just above him. He’s going to be trapped. The thought makes you dizzy. “Are you going to be able to breathe like this?”

“I hope not. Bats, how’s this--you start fucking me and find out.”

With that look on his face it’s close to begging, but not close enough. You smile. “Use your words.”

“Fuck you.”

“I don’t usually hear that kind of language from you. Did you want something?”

He holds out for a few more minutes while you pretend you’re not ready to capitulate immediately. In the meantime, you find out through experimentation that his nipples are as sensitive as they look, that he loves it when you pull his hair, and that the light pressure of your foot against his small, scarred cock makes him frantic.

“I hate you,” he laughs, finally. “Ah, god damn you, I hate your guts. Do it! Do it, please, I need you.”

It’s only the second time you’ve heard the word _please_ from him in all sincerity. “Good,” you say, trying to keep your voice from shaking, keenly aware of how base and ridiculous every moment of this is and too aroused to feel anything but elated by it. “Open.” 

You’d love to take your time with this, but you want to last for him and there’s not a chance in hell if he teases you again. When he opens his mouth, you make him swallow you. You push into his throat until he chokes, until he fights against it, and then you release him.

Joker lowers his head and coughs, sucking in deep, loud breaths. You hold him by the jaw. “Been a while?”

He grins. “You know--” He coughs again. “I think you’re going easy on me. You wouldn’t do that, would you?”

“Maybe a little.” 

“Don’t.”

He’s looking at you like you could throw the earth off its axis, and you don’t know what you did to warrant that from him of all people. You don’t know why you’re glad for it, why you’ve never turned your back on it, why you want to keep it the way he keeps scars. But it tells you enough. You couldn’t do this if he didn’t love it.

“I’m not going to stop this time,” you say.

He breathes in, and smiles. “Promise me.”

You push him down, straddle his face, and fuck him. Even as he struggles to take you, he digs his nails into the back of your thigh to pull you closer. That burning pain is good, almost as good as the tight pressure around you. You’re ruthless, thrusting into his throat until he’s fighting to breathe, not letting up even when the sounds

(God help you.)

the wet choking sounds he makes should disgust you. You look into his wide, bloodshot eyes and he stares back, defiant.

When you’re so close that your mind cuts to static every time you move in him, you pull back until just the head of your cock is in his mouth and let him suck you. His lips are warm and insistent, his tongue stroking hard and steady against the underside. In the ten seconds before he brings you over, you’re blissfully single-minded, awash in pleasure and relief and pure affection for him that you forget to be frightened of. You say his name. You stop just short of saying something you’ll regret.

He swallows around you. You endure it for a few more seconds, just to watch him draw gasping breaths with his eyes shut tight and his face a mess; just to feel him exploring the shape of you with his tongue. Then you pull your softening cock out of his mouth and sink to the floor to hold him.

He drapes his arms around your neck and hangs there, dead weight against your chest. “I hate you,” he croaks.

“I know.” You bury your face in his hair. You’re used to tamping down your curiosity when he smells like sex, so you indulge yourself. The afterglow elevates your obsession with him to euphoria. “We hate each other. It’s all right.”

(He says something you should regret hearing, something you need to cut apart right now and put aside for later. You know he doesn’t expect a reply.)

You manage to get the two of you onto the bed, mostly by carrying him. Joker clings to you still, even though you’re both overheated and sweating. You need a shower, and god knows he does, but you’re not getting up again for anything short of a call from Interpol. Every part of you feels heavy.

He’s quiet, and for once it doesn’t worry you much.

After a few minutes, when his breathing evens out, he takes your hand and shows you where to touch him. He was the monster in your nightmare for years, and sometimes he still is; you keep count of every abhorrent thing he’s done, and you touch him anyway. It’s a way of knowing him, you tell yourself. Gentle touches, meant to comfort--then closer, licking the curve of his ear, biting his throat, sucking his nipples. He makes wordless sounds, not quite there with you. You’ve seen him sensation-drunk before, but only on pain and adrenaline.

He comes out of it some when you start stroking his cock, and lifts his hand to ruffle your hair. “Atta boy. Stamina.” His voice is still broken from strain, but a broad smile spreads across his face. 

You want to do for him what he did for you, and you don’t want to make him beg this time. “Can I?”

Joker brushes your bangs out of your face. “Do you want to kiss me, darling?”

You’re burning, but can’t summon any real shame. “Yes.”

“I think you’re too fair-minded to be satisfied with kissing me on the mouth, though. Isn’t that right?”

“Please.” That’s your voice, you think at a distance. You’ve watched yourself cross this bridge at every step, and offered only weak protests.

“Since you asked so nicely." He can't pull off sounding flippant, not when he's thrusting into your hand and watching you jerk him off with an intensity bordering on dangerous. "But no tongue, or I’ll have to tell Mother Superior you got fresh.” 

It gets a laugh out of you. “So that’s your game, then.”

Joker props his calloused heel up on your shoulder and taps his toe against your ear. “This is all my game, bright eyes.”

You kiss him. He’s too focused on you to go back into the sensory high, but the unrestrained yearning on his face is enthralling. You’re careful to obey the rule he’s laid down, using your hands and lips to caress him, but it's torture. You want him in your mouth; you want to suck him until he's spent and crying out for you. 

After a few short minutes he stops you, and you taste his pre-come on your lips. Sweet, like his blood.

“Let’s leave it there,” he says.

You know. This is deadly close to lovemaking, to something normal human beings might do. “All right.”

He stays beside you though, and you drift. You don’t quite fall asleep. You don’t check to see if he has. The distance separating the two of you into individuals widens by degrees; if you were monitoring closely, you might even be able to chart the return to your own orbits. The urge to unite with him is still there under your ribs, plaintive and unpurged. 

And after a while--sixteen minutes, according to the clock on the wall--the space between yourself who did this unspeakable thing and yourself who exists right now closes.

If you had not fucked up irreparably before, you have now.

You can tell yourself he’s not the first person you shouldn’t have slept with and did, but there’s no equivalence. You know there isn’t. That you’re calm doesn’t make this any less of a crisis. It’s just one you’re at peace with, for some godforsaken reason. 

“I can hear you thinking,” Joker says. “It sounds like a clock ticking.”

He lays his head on your chest. The chill is creeping back in, so you pull the blankets over both of you.

“Joker,” you say, because you can’t hear him thinking at all.

“Mm.” 

“Is this a different game now? Different than the one we were playing before last night.”

He’s quiet for a moment, then: “Good question. It might be the old game.”

You were afraid he’d say that. “Then what does this change?”

The silence stretches on a little longer this time. “I don’t know. Does it have to change anything?”

“I think it has to.” You might as well be honest with him. “It changes things for me.”

“In case of paradigm shift, break glass. That’s like you.”

“It means something to me.”

“It can mean something and not change anything.” That familiar frustration in his voice usually comes just after a challenge, before he digs in his heels. “I know how you are. It’s one more secret to self-flagellate over, so enjoy it.”

You can’t have done this and allow everything to fall into the old pattern, even if it's such a mortal failing, to be changed by it. It’s meaningless, it’s skin on skin, and maybe in another hour you’ll come down out of this and be horrified at your own desperation. “So nothing changes for you at all.”

“I told you, there’s never been a difference. Are you really gonna argue that now? This doesn’t fix anything, if that’s what you’re asking. We’re unfixable.”

“No,” you say, “that’s not what I’m asking.” 

What you think he means is that this was inside the boundaries for him, no more and no less. It might have just been diverting enough to set aside the rules for a few hours. Worse, maybe, is the possibility that he always took you for lovers. If that’s the case, all you’ve done is finally admit that it takes both of you to play the game.

You’re tired of thinking.

“Tell me the joke.” You're grasping for something. “The one about us. About why we’re in Europe.”

“I already told you the punchline. It’s like Jeopardy, now you have to figure out the--”

“Just tell me.”

He sighs. 

“So, these two guys walk into a bar. Every night they come in, sit down next to each other, and drink. Every night they get into a fight, and the bartender tosses them out. He gets so sick of them that eventually he throws up his hands and says, ‘Why don’t you two just go to different bars if all you’re gonna do here is fight?’ And one of them goes, ‘Are you kidding, pal? This is the only joint in town that’ll still let us in!’”

You consider that while he chuckles to himself. “I assume Bane is the bartender.”

“No, Gotham is the bar, Bane’s the mirror behind the bar, you’re the fire extinguisher the one guy finally beats his friend to death with, and I could really use a good single malt scotch. Why do you have to go and make sense of everything?”

He’s almost making sense himself, and it’s threatening to bring back your headache. “One of us has to.”

“Well,” he says. “There you go.”

He traces circles on your chest, and you lay your hand on top of his so you can feel the bones moving under his skin. He’s tried to carve you open with this hand. He’s pulled triggers, administered poisons, and committed murder with it. You wouldn’t survive a love affair with him intact. No one ever does.

But then, you can never be sure how much longer you’ll survive each other, anyway.

“Will you do something for me?” you say. “One thing.”

“Your odds are fair to decent right now.”

“You told me I shouldn’t try to navigate by my expectations. I’m giving it a shot.” You lace his fingers with yours. “Can you do the same?”

“I never had a map in the first place.”

“Liar. You think you know how we’ll end up. You’re stuck on it. But we’re not inside that circle, remember? It’s a different game. We’re playing _truce_. So the old rules don’t apply. Try to let go of them for now.”

He turns his head until his hair falls across his face. “Listen to you, talking gibberish." You feel him smile against your skin. "Total nonsense. Are you sure you’re not running a fever?”

Your heart twists. “I might be.”

“Maybe we’re not really cured yet.”

No, don’t let him do this to you. Don’t project. “Maybe.”

“Then I guess we’ll just have to put up with each other for now.” His fingernails cut into your skin. “How long do you think it’ll take us to find an antidote?”

“I don’t know,” you say. 

As long as he wants it to, maybe.

 

END.

**Author's Note:**

> Endless thanks to my dear friend and beta reader for helping to identify my screwball wordsmithing, and also for listening to me talk about these two dickheads all the time.
> 
> The [magic circle](http://gamingconceptz.blogspot.com/2012/10/huizingas-magic-circle.html) is a concept credited to Johan Huizinga. I could write an essay on how I think this explains a lot of Joker’s behavior re: their relationship but here’s this fic instead, whoops.
> 
> If anyone wants to Google Earth the street they were walking down, [go wild](https://www.google.it/maps/@41.8758834,12.4778926,3a,75y,292.78h,72.16t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1s3uoSbEVpgIw-6OjPNLiqMQ!2e0!7i13312!8i6656).


End file.
